In a wireless communication network, base stations typically provide network access to mobile devices (sometimes referred to as subscriber units). A mobile device generally refers to any wireless device used by an end user, such as a mobile radiotelephone or similar device. Mobile devices communicate with base stations over the communication network in order to communicate with other devices through the base stations. Base stations are generally stationary equipment that wirelessly communicate with the mobile devices to provide the mobile devices with access to a wired telecommunication network. For example, the base stations may provide an interface between the mobile devices and a public switched telephone network (PSTN) such that telephone calls can be routed to and from the mobile devices. Additionally, the base stations may be coupled to a packet-based network for transmission of packet-based voice information or packet-based data.
A number of different wireless communication techniques have been developed for communication between mobile devices and base stations. Examples include frequency division multiple access (FDMA) techniques, time division multiple access (TDMA) techniques and various spread spectrum techniques. A number of wireless communication standards have been developed using these and other techniques. One very common spread spectrum technique used in wireless communication is code division multiple access (CDMA) signal modulation in which multiple communications are simultaneously transmitted over a spread spectrum radio-frequency (RF) signal. CDMA utilizes orthogonal codes to generate spread spectrum signals that can be simultaneously transmitted by several sending devices on the network, and extracted by receiving devices using the respective codes.
In order to support and improve packet communication between mobile devices and base stations, many packet communication techniques have been developed to operate in parallel with telecommunication techniques, such as CDMA. One example of a communication network used for packet communication between mobile devices and base stations is the evolution data optimized (EV-DO) network. EV-DO networking techniques are commonly used in mobile networks that support CDMA or other spread spectrum communication techniques in order to allow for packet communication of data packets or voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) packets. Unfortunately, the first generation (1X) EV-DO network does not provide for quality of service (QoS) in packet transmissions in the physical media access control (MAC) layer. The first generation (1X) EV-DO network is also commonly referred to as “Release 0.” The second generation EV-DO network is commonly referred to as “Release A.”
QoS generally refers to the prioritization of certain packets over other packets in order to better ensure timely transmission of time-sensitive packets, such as VoIP packets or real-time video packets. QoS techniques are common in many networks, but as indicated, are not supported in the MAC layer of the 1X EV-DO network. Other data networking techniques used for packet communication between mobile devices and base stations may have similar limitations, particularly at the hardware level. While future generations of such networks may provide QoS support at the MAC level, implementation of such future generation networks can require hardware updates in the base stations, which can be very costly for network service providers.